What Kerry Said Will Do Him In
October 1, 2004
Listen to Rush…
(...roll some clips of Kerry, holding him to account for his flip-flops and fizzles)
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Last night in the debate, John Kerry had a Kitty Dukakis moment. Does anybody...? I know there's so much, I-don't-know-what, based on my e-mail and even chat with friends, there's so much negativism out there today that you may not be looking at this in the right frame of mind, which is something I aim to change today, ladies and gentlemen. I'll be honest with you about what I thought about it at the same time, but there was a Kitty Dukakis moment. Now, the Kitty Dukakis moment. By that I mean, Michael Dukakis was asked a question by Bernard Shaw, "If your wife were raped and murdered, would you support the death penalty?" and Dukakis wandered off on some stupid answer that doomed him. I'm not saying Kerry's answer doomed him -- last night, anyway -- but by the time the days and weeks pass from last night, he's going to regret saying this.
Do you know what it is? [talking to staff] No, it's not the nuclear weapons question, Mr. Snerdley. That's not the Kitty Dukakis moment. No, that's not it. It's not the troops "dying for a mistake." Nobody knows. This is good. Nobody knows what it is. I've got three members of my staff who have taken a wild guess here and nobody knows what the Kitty Dukakis moment was last night, so I'm going to tell you pretty soon here. I'll show you what it was. It may be the most important sound bite of the night for continuing to define John Kerry as he really is. Now, I want to talk about my reaction to the debate last night. Just to get that on the table and get it then off the table. You can tell me what you thought, of course, when we go to phones and we will do that today as well.
I've got sound bites. I've got opinions from places around the country that are going to surprise you in terms of who won and who lost. ABC did a flash poll last night. In this flash poll, Kerry was said to have won 50-36. It didn't change one voter's mind, however, in how they're going to vote. Prior to the debate last night, it was Bush 50, Kerry 46. After the debate last night, Bush 51, Kerry 47. Even though people who watched the debate polled by ABC thought that Kerry won it by a margin of 50-36, or something like that. First half hour of this debate I thought the election was over. First half hour of this debate, I sent e-mail to my friends and I said, "If this keeps up, we are looking at a landslide tonight," and they all agreed with me. Did you notice the lipstick that Kerry was wearing last night? Oh, by the way, folks, the stock market's going through the roof today: 37.75, the NASDAQ is up.
The Dow Jones Industrial average is up 97. It's been flirting at 105, 110. There's a reason for that today. The reason is, construction spending is at a record high. That means people are building things, and the other aspect is that John Kerry's not president yet, and so the stock market is having a tremendous day today, which is also a decent sign, indication of what happened last night and how people are viewing it. So really, I thought the president was on fire last night the first half of the debate. I thought he was animated. I thought he was quick. He was chomping at the bit, he was on message. Kerry? Everybody's talking about Bush body language today. I thought in the first half of the debate, Kerry looked like an absolute cadaver with that silly smile. Every time Bush scored points, Kerry got that silly smile, started nodding his head, and then started faking feverishly writing notes because he was so nervous.
He knew he was being taken out, and at some point, it's like a football game. There was a change of momentum around 9:55 or 10 o'clock, maybe 9:50, you could just see it. I don't remember what caused it. I don't remember where it was in the debate specifically. It wasn't an immediate reaction I had, it was something that crept over me. You know, there's been a momentum shift here, and it appeared as the momentum shift -- I mean, this was the last 30 minutes of the debate, primarily, and I think that those people who are feeling negative about this are feeling negative about the debate because they've forgotten the first 40 minutes. They only remember the last of what they saw because that's the last of what you see is the last impression you have, and that's when it appeared Kerry seemed to gather himself, didn't look as weird, didn't seem as nervous, didn't seem as flustered. Bush did.
Bush seemed not nervous, it just seemed like he stopped wanting to be there. Bush seemed almost like he'd said what he had to say and, "Okay, let's go home. You know, what else do I have left to say?" Now, I know a lot of you thought he had a lot he could have said. I felt the same way. We always do this. We always put ourselves on the stage. We would have done this if we were there. Why didn't he do that? Why didn't he move in for the kill? I have no answer for you on it. We're not, Bush. He's Bush. I'm not going to make any excuses because I don't have any idea why he didn't do what he did. You can listen to all these other negative people come up and say, "Well, he wasn't prepared. Well, he's not smart. Well, he's not this." We know all those things are not true. Now, one of the things here, I think this momentum shift is what's making everybody think that this was not a victory for Bush. It's arguable.
I mean, the genuine inside the know consensus is, this was a draw. As you've maybe seen on Drudge, CSPAN cameras followed Mike McCurry around when McCurry did not know cameras and microphones were following him. He walked up to Joe Lockhart and Lockhart said, "What's your take?" or McCurry said, "What's your take?" I forget. Lockhart said, "The consensus is it was a draw." That's not spin. That's what Lockhart and the Democrats actually thought. It was a draw, and that's probably the best way to look at it. If you look at the Washington Post they don't think it was a draw. They think Bush won. The Washington Post lead editorial. The Las Vegas Review Journal today, which is no conservative newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, part of the liberal media, Bush won hands down as far as they're concerned. They go so far as to say, you people that think Kerry won have it all wrong. There are other places around the country that are of this point of view as well.
The conventional wisdom in the big media is exactly what I told you it would be: "The race is tightening." They have set it up so that Kerry didn't have to do much in order to be said to have won or to have improved or whatever. Bush had the most to lose. Kerry had the most to gain. That was the parameter and that was the template that was set up beforehand. The mainstream press is falling right in line. Very predictable what they would say. The thing that distresses me is that, you know, we do have our own partisan media out there. We do. Let's be honest: we've got ours. They've got theirs. I've been a little disappointed at some of the squeamishness and some of the jellyfish-spined reaction to some of those on our side. This is a serious point in American history. It's no time to start seeking the approval of the elite in D.C. by showing how open-minded you can be. John Kerry lied through his teeth last night. John Kerry was the exact John Kerry he's always been. He just didn't flip-flop within the -- well, he did flip-flop within the context of the debate.
Here's the best way to measure this. A good way to measure this: the Democratic National Committee has already put together a video of the debate last night. It's on their website and they're touting it, and their spinmeisters are all over the place bragging about it. You know what their video is of? Bush facial expressions. They've got a video of Bush smirking, of Bush looking sour. Bush facial expressions! Because to them, what matters is style over substance, because they can't rely on substance because Kerry had none. When the Republicans get finished putting their ad about this debate together, you know what it's going to feature? John Kerry's words. Which is going to have more impact on voters? John Kerry's words thrown back at him with corrections or a video of George Bush's facial expressions? There is nothing memorable. I mean, if you sit back and think of the memorable things you heard in the debate last night, and then assign them to whoever you think said them. How many of you remember anything Kerry said that's memorable?
How many of you are worried how Bush looked? How many of you are worried that Bush ran out of fire, ran out of energy or what have you? You go to the first half of this debate and you look at what Bush said -- and we're going to show you -- and you look at what Kerry said, and you look at the various films or videos that both camps could put together. If I'm the Democrats, I don't like the fact that all I can do is put together a sound bite of Bush not saying anything. They can put all kinds of video of Bush smirking together all they want, which is typical. Here's the bottom line of this from last night for those of you who are deathly worried. Some of you didn't sleep last night and I know why. You thought last night was going to be put away. You thought last night this election was going to be over. You thought that last night that Bush was going to nail Kerry; Kerry couldn't come back from it.
I have consistently said that there's too much time to go. I didn't want to predict what was going to happen last night because I didn't know. I don't know what's going to happen with the election because it's still a month away. But the bottom line is that the election was not going to end last night, despite the conventional wisdom. There's still too much that can happen, and so since it didn't end last night there's all this negativity or disappointment, panic in some quarters. The bottom line is this: Not a single vote was probably changed last night. Not enough to matter in the polls. I fully expect, however, there to be polls from various places that show Kerry with a little bounce. You can almost predict that. This is not a dynamic changing debate last night. What is going to change, the Kerry camp was defeated going into last night to the point that they had written it all off. They had run out of energy to be mad. They had shot their wad on that.
They'd done all their movies, all of their books, all of their ads. They just didn't have the ability to be angry, because you can't maintain that kind of emotion for as long as they've been trying to. They didn't have any faith in their candidate. It never has been a pro-for-Kerry element of the Democratic electorate. It's always been "anybody but Bush." What happened last night, because they think Kerry mopped up and won, what's going to happen is that Kerry supporters are going to get re-energized. That's all that's going to happen here. Kerry's supporters are going to get re-energized, the undecideds, the swing voters, the five or six people out there that we're all aiming at are still up for grabs, still too much to happen. This is going to be forgotten by the time the next debate comes around, except on this program. We're not going to forget what John Kerry says, because we haven't forgotten and we're going to continue to remind you of what he says. We're going to play it from last night, put it in proper perspective, tell you all the lies he told, that he wasn't called on. I don't know why that wasn't the case, doesn't matter.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I erred, ladies and gentlemen, there's two papers in Las Vegas. It's the Las Vegas Review Journal is the conservative paper. It's Las Vegas Sun that's run by one of Clinton's buddies. That's the leftist paper out there. The leftist paper has not editorialized in favor of Bush last night so I need to correct that. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. All right. Here's John Kerry last night defending his positions on Iraq.
KERRY: I wasn't misleading when I said he was a threat. Nor because I misleading on the day that the president decided to go to war when I said that he had made a mistake in not building strong alliances and that I would have preferred that he did more diplomacy. I've had one position, one consistent position.
RUSH: Okay. John Kerry said one position, one consistent position. We have put together a montage of John Kerry's different positions on Iraq.
KERRY: Left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future of more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world.
KERRY: Yes, I would have voted for the authority.
KERRY: It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
KERRY: I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein.
KERRY: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
KERRY: I'm glad Saddam Hussein is gone and I supported the notion of removing him.
KERRY: Those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected President of the United States.
KERRY: To abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq, that's irresponsible.
DAVID LETTERMAN: If you had been elected to President in 2000, November of 2000, would we be in Iraq now.
KERRY: No.
RUSH: That's John Kerry. If you can detect a consistent position out of any of that, then you're a better person than I, because there isn't a consistent position. He's all over the place, all over Iraq. As he is on so many other things. He really stepped in a number of things last night.
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